Back to School

HUSHED and aroused and hushed, the stubborn cricket
becomes death’s scholar at the third hard frost.
Slowly red leaves are schooled toward silver hollows,
and the lovely year is apprenticed to the grass.

Along the Alleghenies there are whispers
of feet on dusty roads. The summer’s lost
to boys whose pockets bulge with pilfered buckeyes:
the stern bells halt them where the valleys cross.

And they who are apprenticed to the letters
marching, the short, the tall, across the page,
ache fiercely for wood-smell, guns and whimpering setters,
until the first snow stills their golden rage.